Peer ReviewSit down one-on-one with our speakers and ask them anything. Share code, secrets, success stories. This is a fantastic opportunity to work through problems, and get valuable feedback and advice. Bring that thing you've been working on, your latest product idea and your curiosity. We'll take care of the rest.

It's no secret that at GitHub, we use GitHub to write the code that runs GitHub. But what you may not know is that we also use GitHub to manage GitHub the company. In this talk, I'll show you practical ways that we use our own system in a non-code context. You'll learn how we track projects and to-do lists, discuss and collaborate on corporate policies, communicate news to a highly distributed company, coordinate events, update and collaborate on internal and external documentation, and even onboard new employees. You'll come away from this talk with a whole new perspective on using GitHub.

Elizabeth Naramore

Event Handler, Github

These days our culture seems to expect overcommitment and over-connectedness to one's work. Add this expectation to the constant pings from our devices and you get a very fragmented day. It's time we focus on eliminating distractions and managing our time better. It's time we focus on the right things at the right time. But how do you know what the "right thing" is? We'll cover that and other things that will help you do more by doing less.

Erik Reagan

Co-Founder, Technical Director, Focus Lab, LLC

Choosing the right tool for the job sometimes means bringing along a whole toolbox. Rather than break one system and "make it work" to get what we need, wouldn't it be great if they could all just get along? Instead, by distributing responsibilities across a CMS, framework, and other technologies, Anthony will show how a complex back-end system was built with Craft, Laravel, Redis, and more, all working in harmony. Delicious.

Anthony Colangelo

Developer, Happy Cog

You have a great idea for a web-based software application. Now what?
Once you decide to build a SaaS application, you realize ideas are the easy part. Then come the decisions: Should we use a framework? Should we try something new? How comfortable are we in tying a product to an open source tool?
Ryan will discuss the decision-making process behind the development of Lamplighter on Laravel, the lessons learned along the way, and why not to be afraid to shift gears and dive in. See why he says, "It pays to get out of your comfort zone, because you might find a new comfort zone.”

Ryan Masuga

Founder, Developer, Masuga Design

Let's talk money. Specifically, how we think about money. How are rates, wages, credit, contracts, investments, and other business relationships affected by our perception of how money works? How do our financial decisions change as we grow our businesses from freelance work into agencies? With a dash of price theory and a handful of real world examples, let's explore how our beliefs can shape our relationships for better--or worse.

Ben Parizek

Partner, Creative Director, Barrel Strength Design

Matt Fordham shares lessons learned on the journey from solo developer to the leader of a healthy, efficient, and productive team. From process and documentation to workflow and tooling, learn some ways to help your team act as one, adapt quickly to change, and generally be (and remain) awesome.

Matt Fordham

Technical Director, WINTR

UserScape has made some really big mistakes over the past 10 years. Ian walks us through some of the best ones (huh?) and shows us how to learn from them, and some ways you can avoid making the same mistakes in your own business.

Ian Landsman

Founder, Userscape

RESTful APIs are all the rage in the web development community, but there’s a surprising lack of consensus about how to build them the right way. There are a multitude of tutorials, blog posts, and even videos preaching the REST gospel, and sometimes it seems like no two of them even agree with each other! If you’ve ever been confused about whether to use PUT or POST, or found yourself wondering what the heck an unsafe non-idempotent operation is, this talk will set you straight.
Veteran software engineer Samantha Quiñones will walk you through the 2001 doctoral dissertation that started the REST revolution, presenting these fundamental concepts in a way that developers of every skill level will appreciate. Then, through practical examples, she will describe how easy it can be to build truly RESTful HTTP APIs, and how you can be a part of creating a web that’s more scalable, more approachable, and more connected than ever.

Samantha Quiñones

Lead Developer, Politico

Does this sound familiar?
You’re excited at the start of a new project, frustrated by (mis)communications during the build and by the end, you’re looking for a new line of work. Shouldn't we all be on the same side?
Designer and Developer team Michelle Martello and Danielle LeComte will present real world experiences and solutions to end the struggles between design and dev and bring peace and harmony to both sides of the aisle. Really. Learn the keys to successful collaboration that will not only improve your next build but deliver a stronger impact where it counts: to the client.

Michelle Martello

Owner, Minima Designs

Either you've heard about it, or you're already a convert. Either way, come hear about Sass, the original, and most popular front end pre-processor from the horses mouth. In 2007, Hampton Catlin invented the concept of Sass and since then it's been on a rocket ship ride to the moon. Come hear an entertaining history and introduction to both Sass, and Haml, it's more opinionated older sibling. Expect to be entertained and to hear a litany of curse words.

Hampton Catlin

Creator, Sass, Haml, Tritium

The PHP language and its community have seen incredible growth in the last few years. It can be hard to keep up with the pace of new development, and harder to keep our sites up-to-date. But these new packages, practices, and SAASes have amazing potential to improve our sites' flexibility, power, ease of development, and longevity. This isn't just for brand-new frameworks like Laravel, either--CMSes like Craft and PyroCMS have them baked in, and even ExpressionEngine and Codeigniter can be modified to work with modern PHP. Learn about Composer, Packagist, SOLID, SAASes, exceptions, PSRs, and how these and many more tools and practices will transform your experience of PHP.

Matt Stauffer

CTO, Tighten Co.

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